Sunday, August 02, 2015, 3:34 p.m.

D-I-V-O-R-C-E during the golden years

One day in 2011, Virginia Koerber, of Lake Villa, Ill., recalled, she “woke up with a new life.” At 65, she got divorced.

“At an age when I had thought we’d travel and be retired, I was on my own,” she said.

People may marry “forever,” Koerber said, noting that her parents were married for 56 years, but “it doesn’t always turn out that way.”

Now, Koerber is part of a growing club: people who divorce after age 50. The divorce rate for this group doubled between 1990 and 2010, according to a study by the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

I have a few divorced friends over 50 who are having a blast. My mother-in-law got married for the last time at the age of 78. Some of these older people look great and they are fit. When I am down in Florida, I see quite a few men in their 70s who are tan and muscular. It's not how old you are; it is how fit you are.